The wind was a sod. Why did she have to pick February? It blasted across the church yard, swirling past the corner where the new wing was glued inappropriately to the old, concrete to stone. My raincoat flapped around my legs, the tails whipping my calves, as I watched the coffin slowly lowered down into the damp and dripping slot.

On top of Dad, of course. We owed her no less. The rest…the rest was an odd mix. Moments of clarity, pin-sharp, floated amidst the fog of loss. I had known she was going, but all the anticipation, all the preparation, came to nothing in the face of the day she went. I had been at work, that day, no space in the books to let me have a day free from the grind, and…

She had been lying in the chapel of rest, and she was cold, and her forehead was so hard when I kissed it, and all I could do was trust my privacy to the undertakers as I howled my loss soundlessly to the world, or at least to the narrow space that held what was left of her.

An hour, an hour and a half, I don’t know; I sat with her body till I could find my feet again, trust my balance, and then went red-eyed back to the bus stop.

We had her friends, on the day. The choir, that gave us a few of the songs that had made her smile as she sang. Bobby and Betty, from over the road. So few…she had outlived so many friends that they were only there because they awaited her around the church, silent under the mown turf.

We prayed, and we sang, and the choir, the girls, they sang for her, and tried their best to fit around the hole her alto left in the texture. I left the rose on top of her coffin, the one that had come from the bush she had grown from the rootstock I had given her so many years ago, our shared passion, the garden Dad had been torn from so cruelly when the storm…

No. This was my mother’s day. I mourned my father each time I woke, every time I lay down to sleep, but now….

Bye, Mam.

I walked alone from the Church. There had been wishes, condolences, but this was not something that any other person could even begin to ease for me. I leant on my stick, the arthritis biting as I went slowly back to the car the funeral director had set to one side for the sad old cripple I had become.

Sleep well, love. And I knew it had to be done, finally, before I joined her. The resolution, for once, surprised me with its continued presence in the morning, and I made the call before nursing my hip to the bus stop, and then into the seat in the health centre.

“Yes dear?”

“I rang for an appointment with Doctor Singh”

“Can I ask what for?”

“Fungal nail infection”

“Urrgh, at your age too. Take a seat, love, and I’ll call you”

Old magazines, odd company…

“Andrew Gartland to room seven”

I hauled myself up onto my stick. Seventy four fucking years old, and still lying, I made my way to the lift (thank all the gods) and into the corridor, and she called me straight in.

“Good morning, Mr Gartland. Nails, yes, may I see?”

“I am terribly sorry, my dear. I am afraid I told some lies for this appointment. I…”

She had tissues. I needed them.

“Slowly, please, Mr Gartland…”

“Miss…”